Judge Korduba aiming high

CRYSTAL SIMMONS, csimmons@hcnonlinecom

Published 3:31 pm, Monday, February 24, 2014

For the past five years, Judge Laryssa Korduba has served as a municipal judge in Tomball. Now she wants to continue to make a difference on a larger scale as Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4, Place 2.

“I have seen the effect a judge can make in a child’s life, especially when it comes to juvenile issues,” she said. “I want to continue to make that kind of a difference on a larger scale. Tomball is a city of 10,000 and our Precinct has 1 million.”

A University of Houston law school graduate, Korduba has been a practicing attorney for the past 10 years and owns her own law firm.

“These are all people I have worked with,” she said. “They endorsed me not because I’ve paid them or enticed them, but because I’m the most qualified in this specific race with my background.”

She has been an active member of Tomball Rotary since 2006. She has been on numerous boards and community projects, including serving three years on the Boy Scouts of America Community in Action Committee. She was recently elected to the Lone Star College Foundation Board and serves on the Tomball Pregnancy Center Executive Board. The Judge served six years on the Board of Directors for the Northwest Rural EMS and two years on the Northwest Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors.

According to Korduba, the number one problem the courts are facing is inefficiency.

“That court has had the same wonderful judge for 32 years,” she said. “Tom Lawrence has served our community greatly, but I think it’s now time to move forward. I’d like to see that courtroom go paper light then paperless, a process we need to implement as soon as possible.”

She also wants to change the time officers are subpoenaed for jury trials.

Right now they’re being subpoenaed at 8:30 in the morning and they have to sit and wait until their case is called.

She wants to subpoena them at 1:30 p.m. and text them when she needs them.

“There’s no point for taxpayers to pay them overtime to sit in that courtroom instead of at home or on the streets where they can protect our citizens. There’s no point in have them sitting there five or six hours waiting for their case to be called.

“Everyone has a cell phone now days. There’s no reason we can’t contact them and let them know we need them in half an hour.”

Korduba has already implemented the program in the Tomball courts and it’s already made a difference in efficiency, she said.

Whereas now officers come in a throughout the month, Korduba said she would work to organize all the officer’s cases for one day, to maximize efficiency.

Another issue is the unequal caseloads between courts, she said. According to Judge Kent Adams, the Precinct 4, Place 1 JP court heard 120,000 in 2012 and 105,000 cases in 2013, while the place 2 court heard only 50,000.

“The most important issue people are asking is why Judge Kent Adams has such a heavy load. They don’t think it’s fair. If we’re paying for two courts, they think they should be equal,” she said. “When I tell them my plan about efficiency, that’s definitely something that strikes a chord with them. They are also comfortable that I’m a lawyer and have experience on the bench.”

She also advocates a stay-in-school program to reduce truancies.

“When they start not showing up for school, they’re going out and doing things that aren’t necessarily good things. They’re usually out getting in trouble. We need to implement a stay-in-school program on that bench.”

Korduba said implementing a program similar to Judge Kent Adam’s stay in school program would help. That program gives juveniles alternatives to just paying fines, she said.

“If you give someone who is skipping school a fine, who’s paying that fine?” she said. “Normally it’s the parents. We need to give them options so they want to stay in school and get involved in their community.”

While judicial experience or experience in law is not required, Korduba said it’s helpful.

“In the justice of the peace courts I’d handle the same type of criminal cases I handle in the municipal court,” she said. “So they overlap exactly. It’s Class C misdemeanors.

In addition to her experience managing the criminal and juvenile cases as a city municipal judge, Korduba has handled civil cases as a lawyer and learned landlord tenet and eviction law while working in the field before and during law school.

Korduba will appear on the ballot for the Republican primaries on March 4. She is running against Dean Combs, Louis Guthrie, Nasir H. Malik and Lena Engelage. The winner will be up for election against the Democratic candidate in November.

“I want this bench because I believe I can make a difference. I don’t want to be any other kind of judge. This is exactly the kind of work I’ve been doing,” she said. “I would be there as long as the voters would keep me.”